TELEVISION/RADIO; Another Series Sees What It Needs in Kim Delaney

KIM DELANEY was a former model and a little-known actress in 1995, when she was hired to play a police detective for four episodes of the second season of ''N.Y.P.D. Blue.'' By the time she had filmed two episodes, the producers of the police drama were so impressed that they asked her to join the series full time.

''There was something about Kim -- she's drop-dead beautful but has a completely credible blue-collar persona, totally comfortable in a blue-collar world,'' said Steven Bochco, one of the show's creators.

Ms. Delaney, who played a troubled cop with an alcohol problem on the ABC series, laughed nervously at Mr. Bochco's comment. ''All I know is that 'N.Y.P.D. Blue' changed my life,'' she said.

After leaving ''N.Y.P.D. Blue'' last year and starring in her own series, the short-lived ''Philly'' (also a Bochco production) on ABC, Ms. Delaney has once again joined a drama that was already in progress. This time she was enticed to join the cast of the new CBS show ''C.S.I.: Miami'' after it began filming (she does not appear in the pilot episode).

The series, which starts tomorrow night, is the high-profile offshoot of ''C.S.I.: Crime Scene Investigation,'' the most unexpectedly successful dramatic show in years. Both shows are about forensic investigators who use cutting-edge science to solve crimes. The cast of ''C.S.I. Miami'' includes another former ''N.Y.P.D. Blue'' regular, David Caruso, who left that series early in its second season in a highly publicized bid for movie stardom.

Anthony Zuiker, the creator of ''C.S.I.'' and an executive producer of ''C.S.I. Miami,'' said that after evaluating the first episode of the new show, the producers were convinced that they needed a female star to work alongside Mr. Caruso. ''We needed a little more balance in terms of a leading woman,'' Mr. Zuiker said. Sela Ward (''Once and Again'') and Dana Delany (''China Beach,'' the new ''Presidio Med'') were considered. After ABC canceled ''Philly,'' three of the ''C.S.I. Miami'' producers -- Mr. Zuiker, Carol Mendelsohn and Ann Donahue -- had dinner with Ms. Delaney at the Peninsula Hotel in Beverly Hills and offered her a top role on the show.

''When Kim became available, we knew in a heartbeat that we wanted her,'' Ms. Donahue said. ''It was a no-brainer.'' After some hesitation, Ms. Delaney agreed. She plays Megan Donner, a DNA specialist who had left her job after the death of her husband and been replaced by Mr. Caruso's character, Horatio Caine. Donner, now back on the job, works for Caine.

''Kim brings a level of maturity, a level of balance with David Caruso,'' Mr. Zuiker said. ''We just felt we were missing something in the whole picture -- we needed a strong female in the cast.'' Emily Procter and Khandi Alexander, who have been with the show from the start, now follow Ms. Delaney in the credits.

Sitting in her comfortable house in the heart of Beverly Hills recently, Ms. Delaney, who is 40, said she had initially been reluctant to get involved in another series so soon, mostly because she had wanted to spend time with her 12-year-old son, Jack. ''I was not going to work for six or eight months, and just hang out with my kid,'' she said. ''But everybody I know was going: 'Are you crazy? This is a great show.' '' What clinched the deal was the fact that the show is made mostly in nearby El Segundo. (''N.Y.P.D. Blue'' was shot on the 20th Century Fox film lot, which is even closer.) Ms. Delaney said this had allowed her to come home every night, except for sporadic filming in Miami.

''The relationship with David Caruso's character appealed to me,'' Ms. Delaney added. ''Everybody used to report to me; now I'm reporting to him. So there's friction. I'm more, stick with the science, the evidence. He's more gut. It's a complicated business relationship.'' (There are currently no plans for the relationship to go beyond business, Mr. Zuiker said.)

There are differences between the new series and its parent. '' 'C.S.I.' is set in Las Vegas and it's a night show,'' Ms. Donahue said. ''This is very much of a day show --it's blue skies, sunshine and aqua waters.'' Another difference, Ms. Donahue said, is that the newer show will focus more on the personal lives of the investigators. Viewers know little about the lives of the characters played by William L. Petersen, Marg Helgenberger and the other stars of ''C.S.I.''

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Ms. Delaney, who is friendly, almost eager to please, but guarded and diffident, declines to talk about her own personal life. (She's been married and divorced twice, most recently from the actor Joe Cortese, who is Jake's father. She shares the house in Beverly Hills with the television producer Alan Barnette.) And she stiffens and refuses to talk when asked about the embarrassing publicity that followed her arrest for drunken driving last year in Malibu, after a witness called the police to report an erratic driver. She pleaded no contest to reckless driving and was given two years' probation, fined $300 and ordered to attend a safe driving class.

She spoke cryptically about the episode: ''It'll come out later on. Yeah, it was bad. I'm in the public eye.'' She added: ''Most of the time I'm pretty cool with everybody. I'm a girl from Philadelphia, and I don't think people are out to do stuff. I take people at their word until they show me differently.''

Ms. Delaney grew up in a large family in Philadelphia and said she yearned to move back to the East Coast with her son to be closer to it. Her father, Jack, is president of a United Auto Workers local. Her mother, Joan, is a homemaker. Her four brothers are a tax lawyer, a television sports producer, a bartender and an accountant. (Ms. Delaney is especially popular among the union workers who make up film crews and goes out of her way to know them.)

At Hallahan Catholic Girls High School in Philadelphia, she briefly took classes to work as a court reporter. But at the suggestion of friends, she began modeling and was soon taking the train to New York almost daily to work for the Elite agency, posing for catalogs and magazines. Then she began taking acting classes in New York with the coach Bill Esper. From her third audition, in 1981, she was hired to play Jenny Gardner Nelson, a virginal high school student in the soap opera ''All My Children.'' When Ms. Delaney decided to leave the show in 1984, Jenny was killed off in a jet-ski explosion.

Ms. Delaney then worked regularly on television and in films; there seemed no shortage of jobs, but many of the films were forgettable: ''Hunter's Blood'' (1987), ''Body Parts'' (1991), ''The Force'' (1994). There were also numerous television movies. ''You take jobs for different reasons,'' she said. ''You have to pay the mortgage.''

And then came ''N.Y.P.D. Blue.'' ''A huge gift,'' she said. ''I treasure it. I miss it.'' Her character, Detective Diane Russell, had a drinking problem fueled by a childhood in which she was sexually molested. ''Kim is able to access very complicated emotional material,'' Mr. Bochco said.

Russell also had a relationship with Detective Bobby Simone, played by Jimmy Smits, who had replaced Mr. Caruso in the cast. When the Bobby Simone character died in 1998, Mr. Bochco said, Ms. Delaney became ''an underused resource.''

''By virtue of the ensemble nature of the show and its male-dominated sensibility, the effectiveness of Kim's character was reduced,'' he said.

Seated on the patio of her home in the early afternon, Ms. Delaney said that because of her son, she had no interest in projects outside of ''C.S.I.: Miami.'' ''I can't be away for weeks at a time, I don't want to be away,'' she said. ''I go back East as much as I can so Jack can be with his cousins. That's the bottom line for me. Today I've got to get Jack to basketball practice at 2 p.m., and I shoot in El Segundo at 3. I tell the producers what I need to do for my kid and they are very receptive. That's what's important to me. Work is work. I'll always find work. Jack's my priority.''

C.S.I.: Miami

CBS, Mondays at 10 p.m. Eastern, beginning tomorrow.

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A version of this article appears in print on September 22, 2002, on Page 2002030 of the National edition with the headline: TELEVISION/RADIO; Another Series Sees What It Needs in Kim Delaney. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe